Doctor Who: Midnight

We're on the home stretch now, as Who supremo Russell T Davies takes over writing duties for the final four episodes. There's the Big Three to round off the season, starting next week, but first we have a small-scale episode set on a futuristic minibus...

Doctor Who has finally done what I thought it should since the 'Doctor-lite' episodes commenced in season two, and that's pair the necessary 'Doctor-lite' episode with a 'companion-lite' one. Next week Donna (and friends) take the starring role, so this week the Doctor goes off by himself (leaving Donna in a health spa) to check out a natural marvel on the planet Midnight, which is made entirely of diamonds but with a surface so irradiated you can't even look at it. A jaunty beginning on this futuristic minibus lulls the unsuspecting viewer into a false sense of security... before something starts knocking on the outside of the bus... and then inhabits someone inside...

It's a deceptively simple episode, set entirely on one set (bar some bookends with Donna) and featuring all the guest characters locked in that one room with the Doctor, facing a possessed passenger who just repeats what they've said. But with these few elements Davies constructs an episode that is unmeasurably freakier than Steven Moffat's whizz-bang flashily-structured two-parter -- who'd've guessed RTD would craft a scarier episode than Moffat! The central performances of David Tennant and Lesley Sharp are what make the script work of course, especially when the two sit face-to-face hurling random words at each other.

If one wanted to pick flaws you could argue that the resolution is weak (almost non-existent), yet this lack of explanation helps retain the scariness of what you've just witnessed. There's also the very Who moment where the Doctor points out that no one even knew their saviour's name, though for once this isn't over-laboured and effectively speaks for itself. Like a lot of this episode, then: minimal and under-explained, and all the better for it.